Did you hear about the tornado in Kan sas that killed 10,000 people last weekend?

Barack Obama did.

“There was a tragedy in Kansas,” said Obama Monday. “Ten thousand people died – an entire town destroyed.”

“Turns out that the National Guard in Kansas only had 40 percent of its equipment,” he said, “and they are having to slow down the recovery process.”

And where is the missing equipment?

In Iraq, fighting Dubya’s war – thus blame for all the death and destruction in Kansas accrues to President Bush.

Right, Senator?

Wrong.

Indeed, Obama couldn’t possibly have been more wrong.

Only 10 people were killed in the storm – the word “thousand” apparently popping out of Obama’s mouth in his haste to exploit the tragedy, and hang another Katrina-like indictment on the president.

More to the point, tornadoes happen in Kansas – if you doubt it, rent “The Wizard of Oz.”

So it would be reasonable for Kansans to expect their state government to be prepared for such an event.

Instead, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been complaining for years of a “looming crisis” traceable to the fact that a lot of Kansas National Guard heavy equipment had been deployed to Iraq.

Complaining is always easier than discharging the responsibilities of office.

That is, if the “looming crisis” were as grave as the governor claims, why didn’t she simply replace the deployed equipment out of a doubtlessly more-than-adequate Kansas state budget?

The fact is, America is at war. By law, the Army has first claim on the National Guard – its troops and its equipment.

If any president is to blame for the “missing equipment,” it’s Bill Clinton.

For it was on Clinton’s watch – and at his urging – that the post-Cold War “peace dividend” was cashed in.

Clinton conspired with Congress to slash the Army from more than 14 divisions to fewer than 10 – with the explicit understanding that the difference was to be made up in time of war by the deployment of National Guard units with their equipment.

Well, it’s wartime.

Time to pay the piper.

Sure, Barack Obama – two years removed from the back bench of the Illinois Legislature – might be forgiven for not understanding all of this (though inflating a death toll by a factor of 1,000 is a little breathtaking).

But Sebelius and other governors sure should know it.

Didn’t Hurricane Katrina deliver the mother of all wake-up calls?

Sebelius, in particular, clearly recognized the problems facing her tornado-friendly state – the knowledge was embedded in her warnings.

She could have purchased replacement equipment from state resources. Yes, that might have required a bit of belt-tightening and revising of other priorities.

This is called leadership – which seems to be what’s really missing at the moment in Kansas.